


Nostalgia Isn't a Bad Thing

by WriterOfBlocks



Category: Saints Row
Genre: Canon-Typical Gang Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Chaptered, Gen, SR1, SR2, Strained Friendships, pre-SR3
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:01:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25012072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WriterOfBlocks/pseuds/WriterOfBlocks
Summary: Bridget and Troy's friendship has had its ups and downs (and WAY downs) over the years, a patchwork of guilt and could-have-beens that both don't know how to address. But as the friction of their daily lives begins to chafe, maybe revisiting how they got to where they are now- the good, the bad, the ugly and the comforting- isn't such a bad idea after all.[Takes place during post-SR2/pre-SR3, but the majority of the work will be set in SR1/SR2.]
Kudos: 3





	Nostalgia Isn't a Bad Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Roundabout 2015, there was a Big Bang event for the Saints Row fandom on Tumblr, in which authors wrote fics while artists illustrated something for the fic, and they were then published together. Being the procrastinating perfectionist that I was (and still am), I ended up writing down to the wire to hit the required word count. While I did succeed and the product was good, I’ve always wondered what I could do with the writing ability I have now and the time to actually tweak things instead of slapping them on the page in the unhinged frenzy of a writer with a deadline- but now I wonder no longer. The rewritten first chapter is done, with more along the way. Thank you to everyone who's endured me go nuts over this thing; your encouragement and patience is the lifeblood of this beast.

Newton’s third law of Motion states that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”- or in other words, “karma’s a bitch”. If she hadn’t been so caught up in defenestrating Dane Vogel’s ass, Bridget thought, she might have realized sooner that dominating an absurdly powerful corporate conglomerate meant she had to take responsibility for said conglomerate. Thinking through consequences was a self-admitted weak point, though it was one she wore with a certain amount of pride. Up until recently her fast paced world was one of blood and malice. Who had time to think when hesitation meant a bullet in your chest?

  
That was then, though, and this now carried a different cadence. It was a salsa instead of a striptease, tight and controlled and full of steps that would break her ankle (and then some) if she stumbled. Life was dictated by her assistant’s little black book, stuffed past the point of full with appointments and photoshoots and important events she _couldn’t miss, this is really important Ms. Summers, hey where are you going they need you in Meeting Room B right now_.

  
She’d never thought she’d see the day where she was sick of parties.

  
Granted, this was a _classy_ party, not the spontaneous eruptions of joy and debauchery that so often decorated Purgatory’s halls. _Maintenance_ , as her assistant referred to this particular type of affair. _Got to make nice with our shareholders and other important people. Connections are capital._

  
Maybe so. But these weren’t her people. They were old money, used to luxury and born knowing the steps to the song of high society. She was clumsy in comparison, new money unable to bridge the gap between the realms of low and high class. At least she still had an intimidation factor to fall back on when a lack of social graces threatened her control of the situation; the flinch she felt when she shook another old stooge’s hand always brought a smile to her face.

  
By this point in the evening, she’d already gotten as much entertainment out of scaring guests as she could. She’d paid her dues and made nice with a few investors that didn’t actively make her want to vomit, stolen all the fancy horderves that looked appetizing, and sent out a threatening enough aura that cleared the tables next to her so she could finally get some peace. Now she was free to kick back, relax, and…

  
Feel lonely as hell, she supposed. Being the leader of the Saints meant the obligation of making an appearance at major events, but she never subjected the LTs to this kind of torture if she could help it. Pierce would sometimes come along, if only to schmooze and promote himself. Gat avoided events in general like the plague (she didn’t blame him). Shaundi was a riot at parties even after she decided to cut back on the drugs, but she was busy filming her show halfway across the continent, so that was a bust.

  
Bridget leaned back in her chair and took another swig of wine. She let it linger, trying to detect the “hints” and “notes” of flavor everyone talked about when sampling wine, but all she could taste was an alcoholic burn alongside the sweetness of fruit. Things didn’t used to be this hard to understand. Gangsters died, turf was taken, money was made and there weren’t a thousand questions swirling around her head. How had this become her life? Where had everything gone wrong- or right? Which was it, wrong or right? Who even _was_ she, now-?

  
“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

  
Bridget sputtered, her last swallow of wine catching in her throat. Damn it, she thought as she bent her head to cough. _Serves me right for getting lost in thought. The hell did your guard go, Summers?_

  
The man- she assumed it was a man, the dark blue dress pants she could see at the top of her field of vision suggested as much- patted her back as she continued to cough. “Better out than in,” the man said, amusement making its way through his voice despite his best efforts.

  
The coughing eventually slowed enough to let her raise her head, a withering glare already in place. “Who the fuck hits on a lady like _that_ -” she began to say, but whatever scathing words she was about to throw out shriveled on her tongue as she finally noticed who was in front of her.

  
Troy Bradshaw. Chief of Police Troy Bradshaw. Chief of Police Troy fucking Bradshaw, with his _stupid_ mustache and his _stupid_ grin at her expense and his _stupid_ fucking police uniform and his _stupid_ asshole existence making her spill decent enough booze _stupid stupid stupid-_

  
Troy gave a delicate cough and gestured at the chair next to her. “Is, uh, this seat taken?”

  
Bridget shook her head. _Second time he’s gotten you tonight, Summers. You’re slipping._ “Does it look like someone’s sitting in it?” she replied out loud. “Do what you want, Bradshaw, but answer one question for me.” Bridget took one last swig of the wine, then pointed the empty wineglass at him. “Why the fuck are you here?”

  
Troy lifted an eyebrow, but sat down in the chair regardless. “Same reason I’d assume you’re here for,” he replied, retrieving a cream-colored envelope from a pocket (where the fuck did he have pockets in that clown suit) and handing it to her. “Guess I’m important enough to have at a ball celebrating city leaders.”

  
Bridget blinked. Oh yeah. That was the reason for the party. “Started a few hours ago, though,” she said, handing the envelope back and hastily waving a hand about to cover up her realization. “Get stuck in traffic or something?”

  
“Nah, got caught up at work. Had to tackle a mountain of paperwork because _somebody_ -” he threw a sudden glare at her. “-decided blowing up a city block was a good way to start a Saturday night.”

  
Bridget hid the hint of a smirk on her face, choosing instead to gesture with her wine glass. “Excuse you, it wasn’t an _entire_ city block. Just a building. Maybe two. Some upshots were trying to break into the drug trade in Stilwater with a haphazard cooking rig.” She set the wine glass down and leaned her elbows on the table, smiling at Troy over tented fingers. “I decided to do my civic duty and… convince them not to.”

  
Troy answered with a wry smile of his own. “Civic duty, huh? Right. The only way you’d do civic duty is as part of a chain gang.”

  
Bridget stuck her tongue out at Troy. “ _Mean_.”

  
“Accurate,” Troy corrected her.  
“Something can be mean and accurate at the same time. And besides-” She gestured at their surroundings. “Why else would I be here if not for my contributions to our fair city of Stilwater?”

  
Troy scoffed. “Like what?”

  
It was Bridget’s turn to smile wryly, sitting up straighter and shrugging to hide the way everything in her tightened at the question. “I don’t know. I guess being Ultor’s prize lap dog counts as a contribution.”

  
The instant regret on Troy’s face almost made her laugh. Almost. “Shit, I didn’t mean it like that-”

  
Bridget waved a hand. “It’s fine.” It wasn’t fine. “It’s a reasonable question.” It really was. She didn’t belong here. She was as shallow and vain and money-gorged and stained with innocent blood as everyone else in this room, and she still didn’t belong here. She was never going to have a place anywhere remotely close to “normal” society. That ship had sailed already, and here she sat, tainted and clumsy and five years out of touch-

  
Someone laid a hand on her shoulder, jolting her through the fog engulfing her brain. She’d almost instinctively shaken it off- who the fuck had enough of a death wish to touch her?- before she heard a familiar voice in her ear. “You still with me, Bridget?” it murmured.

  
Bridget blinked. Troy had scooted closer without her noticing, brow furrowed in a manner that somehow managed to be infuriating and comforting at the same time. She wanted to hate it- wanted to hate the concern she found in his eyes, the rigid set to his shoulders she recognized from far too many nights stressing over plans back in the day. She wanted it to be disingenuous- it wasn’t. She should have pushed it away- instead she laid her hand over his and squeezed it. “Yeah,” she mumbled. “Yeah, I’m here. I’m back.”

  
The tension dropped from his shoulders, relief spreading over his face. “Scared me for a second, Bridge,” he said, pulling away to a respectable distance. “Think the stress is getting to you.”

  
Bridget huffed a laugh, the fog slowly dispersing. “You’re one to talk about stress.”

  
Troy offered a shrug. “Guilty as charged.”

  
Silence fell between them, not quite comfortable, not entirely awkward. Troy sipped at his wine and looked without seeing at the other attendees; Bridget drummed her fingers on the table and searched for something to say. There was always a purpose to the few times they’d met in person in recent years, and sans one she was at a loss for something to talk about. Or at least, something to talk about with the Chief of fucking Police that wouldn’t count as a confession.

  
She was about to stand up and give an excuse for leaving when Troy broke the silence. “Know how to dance?” he asked, gesturing to the open area in the center of the tables.

  
Bridget shrugged. “I’m not entirely hopeless at it. Does that count?”

  
Troy chuckled. “It does.”

  
Bridget stood up from the table and placed the empty wine glass down. “Lead the way, then.”

* * *

  
They were in luck; the quartet in the corner of the ballroom was starting a new song when they approached the dance floor. Bridget mentally shook her head as they found a place among the rest of the dancing pairs. A goddamn quartet. Better than getting her ears blown out by club speakers, but way too pretentious for her taste.

  
Troy placed one hand on her shoulder and the other on her hip, barely applying any pressure at all. It was the awkward touch of someone who didn’t know where they stood with the person they were touching. Cautious. Inquiring. Trying not to step over boundaries but at the same time probing to find where those boundaries were.

  
In other words, typical Troy behavior.

  
Bridget rolled her eyes. For fuck’s sake, they were _adults_ , not pre-teens at a middle school dance. She put her hands where they were supposed to be on his body- with the correct amount of pressure, thank you very fucking much, if she was going to dance to this shit she was going to do it right- and started moving them around the dance area.

  
_You don’t need to manhandle the man, Bridget_ , the sensible part of her brain piped up.

_Shut it_ , the rest of her brain hissed.

  
To their mutual credit, they tried to dance. Something just wasn’t connecting, to Bridget’s irritation. She kept bumping into Troy, who seemed to be following some rhythm far off from the current song’s rhythm. That wasn’t even mentioning how stiff his movement’s were, almost a pantomime of the dance steps they were attempting.

  
Frustration began to curdle low in her gut, ready to erupt. She let loose a derisive snort in an attempt to lose some of the steam. “God, you dance like a tree.”

  
Troy frowned. “How so?”

  
Bridget’s mouth curled into a grin. “Wooden as hell. What, they didn’t teach you how to schmooze with higher-ups at the police academy?”

  
That got more of a reaction. Troy’s eyes narrowed. “Pots and kettles, Ms. Summers,” he shot back, twirling her around. “Ultor is one of the richest corporations on the planet, and they didn’t set aside any money for dance lessons?”

  
“Bitch, I used to work a pole, I don’t _need_ dance lessons-”

  
“Pole dancing isn’t the same thing-”

  
“But they did make me take etiquette lessons,” Bridget admitted. Step back, side, forward, side. She hadn’t hit Troy’s foot in a while.

  
It was Troy’s turn to snort, the air from his nose making his mustache flutter. “Let me guess, you slept through all of them.”

  
Laughter bubbled from Bridget’s chest, rich and amused. “Only a few. Give me _some_ credit.”

  
Step together, back, together again. The music was faster now, full of life. There were others around them, she knew, but fuck them. This patch of the floor was for them alone, finally moving in harmony.

  
“Gotta say it, Bradshaw,” Bridget said, breaking the brief silence. “You clean up nice when you try to.” It wasn’t a lie, either- maybe there was some merit to the idea of a man in uniform. Whoever did the tailoring needed a raise.

  
Troy’s eyebrows flew upward, but eventually settled as he shot her a grin. “Not so bad yourself, Summers.” He twirled her again, the dress flaring out as she spun.

  
Bridget grinned at him in turn. “It’s a good one, isn’t it?” she replied, twirling herself to get her skirts to flare again. It was form fitting in the right places, but with enough room to move her legs so she didn’t feel cramped. If she was honest, it’d been the only thing keeping her at the party for the last hour. Where else was she supposed to wear a dress as awesome as this?

  
Troy hummed his assent, then went quiet. Too quiet. The ‘I’m thinking about something and don’t necessarily want to tell you’ kind of quiet.

  
Bridget narrowed her eyes. “..What?”

  
Troy cleared his throat. “Just thinking. Back when you first joined the Saints, you wouldn’t be caught dead in a skirt, and now…”

  
“Hey!” Bridget exclaimed, maneuvering them away from the middle of the dance floor. “I had a reputation to maintain back then, you know. Skirts would have broken the image.”

  
“Does ‘pretending to be a dude’ count as an image?” Troy teased, leaning her down into a dip.

  
Bridget huffed as she came back up. The nerve of him. “Pretending, my ass. You and Julius were the ones who started that.”

  
The rhythm they’d managed to find together came to a screeching halt. Troy’s eyes widened as he stumbled into her, nearly sending both of them falling on their asses. Bridget managed to stay upright, bracing against the blow and pushing him back to a stable position.

  
“Sorry,” Troy mumbled. He actually looked embarrassed.

  
“It’s okay,” Bridget replied. “Better you knocking into me and making us eat shit than me knocking into you. Humiliation doesn’t look good on me.”

  
It must be a special occasion. Troy only saved his DEFCON 3 level glare for those- brow almost a perfect V, hazel eyes alight with irritation, as close to actual anger as he could get before it slipped from DEFCON 3 to 2. No matter what happened the rest of the night, she would consider it a success from this alone.

  
The music dwindled to a close, saving her from any retaliation Troy might have planned. Bridget pulled away and curtsied politely, offering him a sly smile before turning and heading back to their table. There was a brief pause, then the click of dress shoes on expensive wood let her know he was following along.

  
A familiar silence drifted in again as they sat back down, but her earlier slip of the tongue weighed down any of her attempts to break it. She hadn’t meant to mention Julius, but here he was; his name hung in the air between them, swirling around amid the other topics they avoided in the name of civility. Julius, the Saints, the boat and the coma, everything that came after and everything that came before- an elephant in the room she couldn’t ignore much longer.

  
So she chose not to.

  
“Do you ever think about that night?” Bridget murmured, then caught herself. “I mean- that night in the alleyway. Where this all began.”

  
For a moment, she couldn’t read his face. Then Troy lifted his head from where he was catching his breath- she kept telling him to cut back on the cigarettes, Christ- mouth tilted up in a smirk but eyes still watching her carefully. “The Saints started long before you joined, Summers,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Narcissist.”

  
“Porn ‘Stashe,” Bridget shot back. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

  
He kept his gaze steady, eyes locked onto hers. “Question for a question. Do you?”

  
“I do,” Bridget replied. “I think about a lot of things from those days.”

  
Troy was silent for a minute, eyes dropping to where he was fiddling with his gloves. “...I do too,” he admitted.

  
Bridget’s eyebrows raised. “Care to share what you’re thinking about with the class?”

  
Troy’s fiddling stopped, and he looked back up at her. “Hey, now,” he said, holding up a hand. “I’m not gonna lay bare everything for free, you know. Tell you what. I share something, you share something. It’d be nice to know what you were thinking back then. You weren’t exactly an open book.”

  
Bridget contemplated this for a moment, making a show of rubbing her chin thoughtfully. “Hmm. All right, Bradshaw. I accept those terms. But start at the beginning. My beginning,” she specified, cutting off Troy’s interjection before it could come out.

  
Troy had a twinkle of mischief in his eye. She’d never trusted that look. “What should I start off with, your boy band haircut or that you looked like you were about to piss your pants when we pulled you off the sidewalk?” he teased.

  
“Neither. Unless you _want_ your shitty facial hair shaved off and put on display in Purgatory?”

  
“Hey, no need to get touchy.”


End file.
